geoff: Earlier this month, Texas
joint 19 other states that band
transition related care for
minors.
Lorber owned Lopez spent time in
Texas to learn more about the
law, and spoke to one family
grappling with what is next.
This story includes discussion
about suicide and depression.
>> We are like a family.
We love to party.
We're just as normal as all the
other families and just a lot of
people think otherwise.
Laura: Meet Leah.
She's a 12-year-old who likes to
play soccer and skateboard.
She lives in the Austin, Texas,
area with her parents, John and
Mary.
We aren't showing their faces
and have changed their names for
this story because families like
theirs are increasingly under
threat.
Leah is a trans girl.
She started coming out to her
family two years ago, first as a
gay boy.
>> She was very much starting to
talk more and more about how she
was feeling and how she just
didn't feel like she was in the
right body.
We were seeing it start to take
its toll on her mental health.
There was just one night where
everything just kind of came
pouring out of her and she was
just saying, I don't know.
I don't know why I'm feeling
like this.
I don't know what else to do.
We were sitting on the floor in
her room and she was just
sobbing in my lab.
And I just said, hey Leah, or
Leah -- sorry, I said, what if I
just told you you can wake up
tomorrow and you can be who you
are.
>> And that moment, literally,
like tears in her eyes,
frowning.
And literally in that moment, as
soon as she said that, her face,
when she realized, I can?
It just I mean, the grin went
from ear to ear, like
immediately.
Laura: John and Mary took Leah
to Wal-Mart to pick out new
clothes.
>> For so long, I wasn't being
me.
And when I was able to just go
through and get what I really
wanted, wearing what I wanted,
it just felt like I was so much
more free.
Laura: As Leah began to socially
transition, wearing dresses and
using her new name, her family
became acutely aware of the
world around them.
>> If politics were out,
wouldn't even be an issue.
This is just Leah.
She plays soccer and we were
just living our life.
But she's doing her thing.
But politics, laws, ignorance
has brought has created the
environment that we're in and
that we have to worry about all
this stuff wherever we go.
>> The left wing gender insanity
being pushed on our children is
an act of child abuse.
>> Transgenderism must be
eradicated from public life
entirely.
>> We are going to kick the
biological men out of the
women's sports.
Laura: Leah's played soccer
since she was three.
It's her favorite sport.
But after her transition, she
was dropped from the co-ed team.
She wanted to play with girls,
but worried it would be too much
of a fight.
And Leah just wanted to play.
So she joined the boys team.
She struggled, hearing the wrong
pronouns at every practice.
>> I've always loved soccer.
I felt like that was my escape.
Now it feels like I'm trying to
escape from that now.
Laura: In the months after
Leah's social transition, she
and her family started thinking
about the medical treatments
that could help make her body
match her gender identity.
Since doctors say those
treatments shouldn't begin
before puberty, Leah would have
to wait.
But her parents agreed to move
forward when the time was right.
>> We had our own fears of what
a transition was like, what it
-- we would sit here day after
day and just questions and
research and figure stuff out.
The last two years, if you asked
me her as a 12-year-old can
understand of wrap her head
around what's going on and what
she thinks she wants, she does.
Because she's put more work in
the last two years than most
adults do in their whole
lifetime, mentally speaking.
>> Just being able to be me is
really important to me and it
makes me feel great.
Laura: Gender affirming care is
endorsed by every major American
medical association and they say
this treatment is safe and can
be life-saving.
Roughly 1.4% of U.S. Youth, some
300,000, identify as
transgender.
Each can take a slightly
different path in their medical
treatment, or none at all.
Guidelines say care begins with
a mental health evaluation.
From there, a young person can
take reversible medication to
pause puberty.
It gives the person time to
consider the next step.
Either continue with puberty in
their gender assigned at birth
or receive hormones to make
their body match their gender
identity.
Those lead to some more
permanent changes, like a lower
voice or facial hair in
transgender boys, and breast
development in transgender
girls.
And finally, there's surgery.
Which is rare for minors.
>> This medicine that we
practice is incredibly
individualized and nuanced.
Laura: Doctor Jason Rafferty is
a pediatrician and child
psychiatrist who wrote the
American academy of pediatrics
policy statement supporting
gender-affirming care.
>> What we see is that starting
with the social affirmation of
creating a safe space and
allowing people to express who
they are, it can decrease and
normalize rates of depression as
well as suicidality.
We know that if there are
medical interventions that use
puberty blockers appropriately
and even when using gender
affirming hormones
appropriately, that similarly it
can decrease negative mental
health outcomes.
Laura: Despite that, Republican
politicians with an eye toward
2024 continue to question rights
for trans youth.
>> How are we supposed to get
our girls used to the fact that
biological boys are in their
locker rooms?
And then we wonder why a third
of our teenage girls seriously
contemplated suicide last year?
Laura: There's no evidence to
support that connection.
In fact, it's transgender youth
who face consistently higher
rates of depression and are
about twice as likely as their
peers to attempt suicide.
Republicans have also vilified
doctors for providing gender
affirming care.
>> They'll say it's health care
to cut off the private parts of
a 14 or 15-year-old?
That is not health care.
That is mutilation.
How common is gender
reassignment surgery on those
under the age of 18?
>> Not very common at all.
It is really rare and it is the
exception at this point to the
rules.
And for the most part, to the
guidelines that are in place.
Laura: Still, the issue has
animated Republicans in states
like Texas, who have ordered a
child abuse investigations into
parents of trans youth and made
outlawing all medical treatments
for trans youth a priority.
The American civil liberties
union tracked more than 50 bills
targeting the rights of lgbtq
people in Texas this legislative
session, more than any other
state.
But perhaps no bill drew as much
backlash as the one banning
gender affirming care for
minors.
Despite trans advocates flooding
the halls and chambers of the
Texas capitol for weeks, to
-- governor Greg Abbott signed
the bill into law June 2.
It revokes the licenses of
doctors who provide
gender-affirming medical care to
minors, and requires anyone
currently on treatment to be
weaned off.
Republican representative Tom
Oliverson, an anesthesiologist
who ushered the bill sb-14
through the Texas house, rejects
the medical establishment's
consensus on gender affirming
care.
There are some estimated 30,000
kids in Texas between the age of
13 and 17 who identify as
transgender.
What is your message to them?
>> My message to them is that we
want you to get the mental
health treatments that you need.
We want you to go through this
process with therapists and
counselors, figure out who you
are, and when you are an adult,
you can make decisions for
yourself.
We don't allow children in Texas
to get tattoos.
We don't allow children in Texas
to sign medical consents.
We don't allow children in Texas
to drive.
It seems somewhat absurd to me
that we would take a child's
word for who they think they're
going to be at age 30, at age
11, and make permanent changes
-- at age 11.
Reporter: Doctor Joshua safer
leads the mount sinai center for
transgender medicine and surgery
in New York.
>> When people wonder why the
medical establishment has not
thought of simply counseling
people with deal with dealing
and treating this as a mental
health condition, the short
answer is the medical
establishment already thought
that and spent decades thinking
that and acting that.
And that's what has not worked.
Laura: Doctor Michelle Forcier
is a professor of pediatrics at
brown university.
>> If I had a 10-year-old or
eight-year-old who told me their
ear hurt, I wouldn't look at
them and say, you're only eight
or 10, you don't know if your
ear hurts, right?
It's important that we listen to
kids. Again, doesn't mean that a
kid says I'm trans, and 2 hours
later, they get hormones.
It means that we respect kids as
individuals.
Laura: We asked Oliverson about
Leah.
One of the kids that we have
spoken to was in such pain
watching what was happening and
what was unfolding in Texas
because they live in Texas, they
said I don't get why they all
hate me.
They don't know me.
What do you say to that kid?
>> Well, I mean, obviously, I
want that kid to get some mental
health treatment.
Laura: They've been going
through mental health treatment
for a long time.
>> Good.
That is the appropriate
treatment for mental health
conditions.
Childhood, it can be tough
sometimes.
I remember being an adolescent,
that's a tough time to figure
out who you are and how you sort
of fit into that collective of
humanity.
Laura: Leah is now in puberty.
Since the new Texas law takes
effect on September 1st, her
family's been forced to consider
drastic steps to access puberty
blockers.
>> After our last doctor's
visit, we were feeling rushed by
the law.
We were like, ok, if we do this,
we have to go back in August.
So maybe she can get the puberty
blockers starting before
September 1.
It was like this anxiety.
It was like, if we don't do this
now, what are we going to do?
Laura: John and Mary are now
looking at providers in new
Mexico.
>> It feels like we're being
pushed out, pushed out of our
home, pushed out of our state,
pushed out of our jobs.
If we go somewhere, what happens
next?
And I don't want to feel like we
are constantly on the run.
I don't want to feel like we're
refugees in our own country.
Laura: The thought of leaving is
what weighs heaviest on Leah.
>> We just have our whole life
here.
And the last thing I want to do
would be to have to move.
Laura: Last week, I asked
president Biden about Leah's
family.
They are afraid.
They are considering leaving not
just their state, but the
country.
Sir, why do you think this is
-- what do you say to the
parents like the ones I spoke
to, who are contemplating
leaving the country because they
don't feel safe anymore?
Pres. Biden: First of all, maybe
quietly when we finish this, you
can give me the number of that
family, and I will call them and
let them know that the president
and this administration has
their back.
And I mean that.
>> Hearing that was like,
finally, with all of the
negative hate speech we are
hearing, you are actually
hearing something positive.
Laura: Despite the reassurance,
Leah's family is still grappling
with what is happening in Texas.
>> Once as a parent, you have
been in a place where you have
heard your child say that they
do not want to live, seeing the
things we have seen her do to
herself, we will do anything to
never be back there.
Anything.
I don't see how that can be
considered child abuse.
We are saving her.
We're saving her life.
Laura: For the pbs newshour, I
am Laura barron-lopez in Texas.
♪♪